


Clarity in Pain

by Celticas



Series: Trope Bingo [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt, Telepathy, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 18:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21396358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/pseuds/Celticas
Summary: The pain was overwhelming. His brain was trying to push out of his ears. It was too much to deal with on his own, luckily he wasn't alone.
Relationships: pre-Clint Barton/ Phil Coulson
Series: Trope Bingo [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1518110
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53
Collections: Clint/Coulson Trope Bingo





	Clarity in Pain

Phil curled in on himself. The pain trying to split his head in two was only getting worse. It had started as a small, but persistent stabbing pain behind his right eye. He hadn’t even known there was a problem at first. Playing the bumbling American tourist, he had been browsing the sprawling arts and crafts market. Ignoring the headache, putting it down to too much sun and heat and not enough water. He had made the exchange with his informant and wound his way back to the middle range hotel his cover was staying in, a cloth bag swinging from his wrist filled with the packet and a few trinkets he had picked up.

Agent Romanov, found him almost unconscious half an hour later. He had been slumped just inside the entryway of his room. She had thought he was dead. Obviously the only way of checking was by poking him in the ribs with the toe of her boot. At his low groan, she had called in a med-team instead of a clean-up crew.

That was over 24 hours ago. The Hazmat suited team stuffed him in an Iso-pod gotten him back to base and started running every test they could think of and pumping him full of any painkiller they could find. So far, every test was clear and not a single one of the painkillers had helped.

They had been keeping him updated, relaying each clean result, until the noise of so many people had gotten too much. His brain had started to shut down and he had blacked out. Coming to, alone, the pain had retreated for the first time.

A written note had been waiting for him, folded and standing upright in his line of sight. 

_ Proximity of people exacerbated the affliction. See Tablet for details and updates. _

The slim line of a tablet was lying flat on the table. The little chip in the case told him it was his, not a clean device. Eyes already aching from reading the short note he ignored it, stuffing his head under the pillow to try and block all of the noise!

Feeling like a five year old having a tantrum he tried to go back to sleep.

Nothing doing, a murmur, too low for him to make out the words of was swirling through his ears. Throwing the pillow off, he glared. At the empty room. And the empty corridor beyond. The sound stopped.

The pillow went under his head this time. Eyes open a slit, he feigned sleep, trying to catch whoever was disregarding orders.

An exhalation more than a sigh echoed through the room. Whoever it was thought they had gotten away with it. But there wasn’t anyone there. Closing his eyes fully, he tried to relax the clenched muscles running up and down his body. Sink into the pain and the noise rather than push it down and away.

God, it hurt. Everything hurt. And the universe was screaming at him. In, two, three, hold, five, six seven eight, out, nine, ten. He counted. An old technique he hadn’t used for years. A way to deal with panic attacks that had plagued him in his teens but grown out of.

Slowly, painstakingly, he was able to shuffle some of the noise out of his head. He had read somewhere that when a deaf person first got a cochlear implant, they could get massive headaches until their brain learnt how to filter the sound. It felt a little like he thought that would feel like. That there was a sudden increase in the information his brain was taking in and it had to learn what was important.

Focused on the sound, he could slip things into a category and ignore them. He would think about why he could hear someone contemplating their lunch choices later, because if he tried to do it now he would have to consider that he was going crazy.

The last noise, the one that had underlain it all, the largest, and the one he was trying not to shy away from, finally came to the fore. It was a voice he knew. A voice he was so used to having in his head, he almost wrote it off as normal. But the tone was wrong. That voice was always light, full of laughter. There was only fear there now. Fear and something else. Something that had always been there, but was normally hidden by the flash bang of quicker and brighter emotions. Complete, absolute devotion and love.

Huh.

Allowing his eyes to open, the sound dampened again, the feelings still there, burning low, but the mental monologue stopped. Waiting to see what Phil was going to do.

“Clint?” His voice sounded weird, he heard it with his ears but also echoed a second later as the other man heard it.

The awareness of Clint shrunk in on itself. Not leaving, but trying to be even stiller than he had been. 

“I know you're there. Come down.” Carefully, he pushed himself to seating. Taking a minute to fluff his pillows, letting Clint decide what he was going to do.

“Quarantine.” The word floated out of the air vent, followed by an internal ramble about breaking said quarantine and how much trouble he was in, but how it was worth it.

Phil just huffed.

A light puff of air was the only indication that Clint had entered the room, his feet barely thumping on the ground.

“How did’ya know?” Clint mumbled, staring at the arrow covered socks on his feet.

“I could…hear… you.” There wasn’t really a better word to describe it.

Sharp eyes snapped at the focus fully on him. The hesitation in Phil’s words catching his attention.

_ Heard? _ Clint thought at him, figuring it out faster than Phil did.  _ Shit. Everything? I’m sorry! I didn’t. _

“Yes everything.” He smiled softly, his own mirrored feelings shining freely from his eyes for the first time.

Clint’s smile answered him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over on [Tumblr](https://quartzcelticas.tumblr.com/). Come say 'hi'.


End file.
